Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is an Irish Independent Podcast. Last week, news which came out of the blue. It fell into the surprising but not shocking category.
Daniel Kinahan, one of the leaders of an international organized crime group, has been arrested in the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Kinahan, who's in his 40s, was detained on foot of an arrest warrant issued by the Irish courts in relation to alleged serious organized crime offenses. Dubai police said the arrest took place on the 15th of April.
Now, this is, of course, a criminal story, but also a sporting one where boxing has been to the fore. In due course, happy to say we'll speak to Nicola Talent of Crime World and sports journalist Ciarán Cunningham. But first, it's worth standing back just a moment and laying out what has transpired because it has been so extraordinary. Like I said, a criminal story, but also a sporting one.
Daniel Kinahan allegedly running a billion euro operation, secretive to the nth degree, and yet his passion for boxing tempted him out from the shadows. Boxing must have held the very real lure of influence and glamour and respectability on a global scale.
Chapter 2: What led to Daniel Kinahan's arrest in Dubai?
And for a while, it all looked very possible. These two pursuits, one requiring invisibility and the other bringing celebrity, running in parallel. You'd have to say across the 2010s and into this decade, two things happened in tandem which really should have been mutually exclusive, but they weren't. One, the Kinahan-Hutch feud caught fire.
It both horrified and enthralled the country as 18 men were murdered across several years. And two, at the very same time, Daniel Kinahan rose and rose in the world of boxing. At its peak, the gangland feud was borderline surreal. It felt as if the lines between reality and fiction were blurred. Gangland figures morphed ever more into big national characters.
They were the father of media coverage and WhatsApp groups across the country. And, by coincidence or not, it was also a time when Love-Hate was the most popular show in the country. Nidge was front and centre in the national conversation every bit as much as the Kinnehans and the Hutches.
What's more, to add to the surreal nature of it all, it seemed as if the Gardaí in the state could do nothing to halt the madness. All the while, MTK Global was enjoying a meteoric rise both here and abroad. It was founded in 2012 by Matthew Macklin. Originally, it was called MGM until 2017 when it switched to MTK Global. The MGM stood for Macklin's Jim Marbella.
And Daniel Kinahan, his friend, was involved from early on. And Kinahan was very prominent. There's a famous photo of him at the National Stadium in Dublin. He's in the ring in a three-piece suit, smiling for the cameras. He's alongside Jamie Conlon, Paddy Barnes and Matthew Macklin. And Jamie had just beaten the Mexican fighter, Junior Granados. This was 2015.
Also in 15, world champion Billy Joe Saunders was interviewed having just beaten Andy Lee in their world title fight. Kinahan is visible over Saunders' shoulder as he speaks.
I've joined up with management team MGM, Daniel, Matthew Macklin's gym. You know, I couldn't do it without them.
MTK would represent the likes of Tyson Fury, arguably the most famous boxer in the world, Karl Frampton, Michael Conlon and Paddy Barnes, to name a few. At its peak, they would claim to have branches in 15 different countries and 25 different cities. They reportedly had over 200 boxers on their books.
Now, we should say very clearly, neither Matthew Macklin nor the MTK boxers have been accused of any criminal activity. But of those 200 boxers, the word was that MTK paid better than many other companies. Good immediate money was a very appealing option to many boxers who didn't have an abundance of options.
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Chapter 3: How did Daniel Kinahan rise in the boxing world despite criminal ties?
I'm just after getting off the phone with Daniel Kinahan. He's just informed me that the biggest fight in British boxing history has just been agreed. Get up there, my boy! Big shout-out, Dan. He got this done. Literally over the line. Two-fight deal. Tyson Fury versus Anthony Joshua next year.
One problem. I've just got to smash Deontay Wilder's face right in in the next fight.
And then we go into the Joshua fight next year. So there we are. The Gypsy King versus AJ is on for next year. But there's a hurdle in the road called the Bronze Bomber, a.k.a.
the Knockout King. And I will get on to him and knock him spark out. And then we go on to the big fight. So big thank you, Dan.
Now, understandably, most of the world was focused and thrilled by the good news. Fury against Joshua was happening at last. In Ireland, though, it had more of a stop-the-presses effect. The biggest fight of the century had been made possible by Daniel Kinnahan. What's more, Fury had name-checked him three times in 60 seconds. It felt like a kind of brazen coming-out party.
In Ireland, this Fury post marked a shift. Fury had mentioned Kinahan before, but this was a whole other level. Suddenly, Daniel Kinahan was not being just talked about in the media. He had graduated to Leinster House. Fine Gael TD Neil Richmond used parliamentary privilege to discuss the issue.
The Minister of State for Sport, Brendan Griffin, started communications with British authorities where the fight may happen and British broadcasters. Later, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the Dáil that there had been contact with authorities in the UAE regarding Kinnaghan. Varadkar said he was, quote, taken aback by Tyson Fury and his video. The results were immediate.
That same month, June 2020, KHK over in Bahrain announced they were cutting ties with Kinahan as their new special advisor. The likes of CNN and the New York Times published critical stories about Kinahan and boxing. That said... It wasn't universal condemnation. It's worth a glimpse as to how Kinnan had ascended up the boxing ranks where money and pragmatism tend to rule the day.
Here also in June 2020 is Bob Arum, legendary promoter in boxing. His company Top Rank had signed a deal with MTK and ESPN in 2019, and he gave this verdict on all the controversy.
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Chapter 4: What was the impact of the Kinahan-Hutch feud on boxing in Ireland?
And now, all of a sudden, Daniel Kinahan is in a Dubai prison awaiting extradition to Ireland. His fate will be decided by the courts. For the boxing industry here, there is a degree of picking up the pieces after all the acrimony of the MTK years.
Between Bernard Dunne's world title fight in 09 and now talk of Katie Taylor at Crowe Park, big time international fights in Dublin have been a non-starter. And against the glittering backdrop of Olympic success, it has been a rough period for the sport. Let's talk to Nicola Tallent and Ciarán Cunningham. Bring us up to date. What's been happening?
Well, a sort of a seismic thing in the world of crime reporting is that Daniel Kinahan has been arrested in Dubai. He is in custody over there. He will undoubtedly try and fight the extradition back to Ireland, but he's wanted here before the courts on serious charges.
We don't have them exactly yet, but it looks like a kind of an overarching case against him where the state will accuse him of involvement in murder and organised crime. And is he likely to have a fair chance of fighting extradition or is he up against it on that front? It's very difficult to know how any of that goes in the Emirates because it's not an open court system. We don't have any links.
We can't send a reporter along. I know that Sean McGovern, who's his number two, who was extradited last year, he was eight months kind of as such in custody there and fighting some extradition until he was sent back. I would imagine that Kinahan's will be less, maybe half that. I'd be looking at sort of four months to six months and I think he'd be back in the country.
We'd probably send a military jet out for him in the same way as we did for McGovern. So this is big stuff, you know. And I have spent the last few days not off the phone between calls from, you know, the Washington Post, the New York Times, you name it. I mean, this is a global story.
And really, it's what you're about to speak about the boxing that put Daniel Kinahan on the world stage like that. And we did just an explainer, a preamble as such for the listeners. So where we largely left it was 2022 on that very famous day, dramatic day where US authorities pitched up at City Hall and... Gardaí were there, European, British enforcement there.
And I think the suspicion at that point, or just the feeling lay people would have had looking on that day was, my goodness, he's going to be arrested within the hour, like within the month. And yet we've had these four years where it seems he's living a fairly comfortable lifestyle, to say the least, in Dubai. He's seen at fight events.
And I suppose many people would have wondered, what's the delay from... you know, that sense of urgency on 22 with now. So 22 were the sanctions when the US Treasury came over and they named the Kinahan organization, I think the first European crime group that were sanctioned by the US. And those sanctions are a little bit, almost nearly a PR thing.
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Chapter 5: What happened during the Regency Hotel shooting and its significance?
He was living openly because there were no charges levelled against him at that point. Okay. I think people almost missed that technicality and thought he had some kind of protection out there.
Well, he, you know, he did too, because and from the beginning, you know, himself, his brother, his father, you're not supposed to be able to get residency or set up companies, for example, in the Emirates. If you have any criminal convictions, his father has many convictions for money laundering, for heroin trafficking and various other things.
You know, there would have been plenty of simple Google searches that would show you that Daniel Kinahan had strong links to criminality and yet they got residency out there. He would have had and befriended a kind of a brattish younger royal who he believed was really protecting him. And look, in the end of the day, it was their money that saw them so welcome in the Gulf.
For him, the fact that he was bringing sport out there and he was, you know, that's what they want. They want to be the centre of certain sports and for them to be hosted. And he was bringing that, you know, he was bringing that out to the Emirates. So he was welcome there for a long time. Ciarán, you could almost divide the boxing timeline into two categories.
Part one being the pre-Tyson Fury Instagram post in 2020 and then part two being subsequent to that. Just those years from 2012 onwards when MGM to become MTK Global was set up. They were kind of strange years in that it was almost like, you know, you have to remember this stuff kind of unfolds in real time and it's bit by bit.
He's involved and then, oh, he's in the national stadium in a photo in the ring and, oh, there he is with Billy Joe Saunders thanking him in 15 and then the Regency happens and then there's MTK and the ban and the acrimony. That kind of unfolded in an almost surreal fashion, not least because it was in tandem to the Hutch-Kinahan feud.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think there were two moments from a boxing point of view that were really important. It was Tyson Fury's Instagram post and the other was the BBC Panorama investigation. Even though to a lot of us that would watch that, we knew a lot of the story, we were familiar with it, but it got to an audience who didn't know this stuff.
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Chapter 6: What does the future hold for boxing in Ireland post-Kinahan?
Up to then, even though the cartel had tentacles all over the world, like at the 2016 Olympics, I interviewed a boxer in an apartment, an Irish boxer in an apartment, and that apartment was owned by Daniel Kinnan. The Kinnans owned property and were involved in businesses everywhere.
But I think the Panorama investigation and Tyson Fury's Instagram post, suddenly people in Britain and elsewhere sat up and took notice, very importantly in the US. You had people like, I remember at the time, Gary Lineker tweeted about, this is great news, you know, around Tyson saying that he was going to fight Joshua. And he got a lot of replies from here, you know, Google Daniel Kinahan.
And in fairness, he did. And he came back to me and said, I didn't know anything with this guy. This is amazing stuff. So it's an interesting one. I like Nicola. I've taken a fair few calls the last few days. But a lot of people... outside of Ireland covering this in terms of the fallout for boxing.
And I was told, and I'd be a very senior figure in British boxing, that there are a lot of people within the sport at a professional level that are very nervous at where this investigation will go, how deep they'll go in going after the money trail and who got what, where and when and where that money came from. You know, there's a number of boxing businesses
that had people involved at a high level who were very close to Kinna. So I think they're nervous now and it will be interesting to see how this pans out for the sport.
It was interesting after the Panorama investigation in 21, Nicola. It was picked up in the UK. TalkSport seemed to have a line of communication with Kinnan for a time and they were voicing up and releasing his statements. He did try for a period in 21 to win the PR war in the UK.
I think he probably had a sense back home that wasn't really on, but he did try for a time in the UK to win it across 21. He had mattered to him then. And the panorama thing was, yeah, he was running a propaganda war himself in the background. He had when he eventually sort of had stepped out of the shadows. See, if you remember, MGM was in Spain, OK, set up in 2012.
And I remember the first time I realized I thought it was a hobby. I thought it was a gym they were going to. when I saw a tweet from him and he was complaining about the builders. And then it opened, of course, and it was Matthew Macklin's gym. And he didn't initially come forward. Then he said he was a co-founder of it. So then 2016 happens.
They moved to Dubai and they moved the intellectual rights of MGM out to Dubai. And then he says he sold it lock, stock and barrel to Sandra Vaughan. She takes over, goes to war with the Irish media. And the rest is history, I suppose. But all the while, Daniel Kinahan is out in Dubai. He's standing back from it. He's saying he's nothing to do with it.
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Chapter 7: How did Daniel Kinahan attempt to legitimize his influence in boxing?
So a lot of strange stuff happened and there was a lot of kind of, it felt like the media who were speaking out against Daniel, and I'm sure Ciarán got it as well, because there was very few sports journalists who spoke out. They were also, if you were doing a list, Ciarán, your name would be on the shorter side, because the... very few people were willing to go up against that.
It felt to me like schoolyard bullying or something like that. And a lot of his supporters within the boxing arena got involved with it, you know, be it on social media or things they were saying. And it was quite a threatening environment. Was he quick with legal threats too? Yes, there was legal threats. There was legal threats coming. He employed a big firm in the UK.
And he certainly didn't, they didn't go anywhere, but it wasn't very comfortable to be getting a legal threat from the head of an international drug cartel, which was worth billions, you know. So all of that was used. And of course, for the sports journalists here in Ireland, didn't Sandra Vaughan ban, put a ban on them? There was no interviews to be given. I mean, it is all a very much kind of
bullying. Ciarán it's well known I think that there were no big time professional fights in Dublin from Well, certainly the Regency, but I guess, you know, even Bernard Dunn through until the Chantal Cameron, Katie Taylor fights in 23 and maybe another Crowe Park one now. But certainly there was a lost decade in there somewhere when it came to big time professional fighting.
So that was one consequence of MTK and Kinahan. Has it damaged the sport of boxing beyond that on the ground from what you've heard?
I think so. Yeah, well, on the ground in terms of... The amateur game, not so much in terms of participation, but in terms of public support, I think it has an impact. People will say the Anthony Caccacci fight in the Three Arena in March was sold out, which I think would have taken people by surprise that there is an audience there.
But I think even within... I'd look at somebody, say, like Donald McRae in The Guardian. Donald is 65 this year, so he may well retire in the next couple of years. When he steps away, will the Guardian cover boxing? I'm not sure they will. But when you look at Seoul, not to the same extent. Don covers different sports, but boxing is his main love and his main area of expertise.
And I think a lot of all that's going on around boxing has... has diluted interest among the media.
Would you not say, though, that's a consequence of the direction of media generally? Like, golf journalists aren't being replaced either? That's at the other end of the spectrum?
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Chapter 8: What were the implications of Tyson Fury's Instagram post about Kinahan?
they had no interest in covering it. Like you really have, you know, they had to be persuaded to do so. And, you know, that band that MTK and Sandra Vaughan, you know, were announced on the Irish media, that was quite ugly in that it was a partitionist band, a band. Like, I don't think media outlets north of the border acquitted themselves well, but they carried on as if nothing had happened.
Mm-hmm. And I think, you know, where was the solidarity? Because this was, and I've never bought into this thing that sports or sports journalism operates in a vacuum. You can't say, oh, that story is a front page story. We just talked to the boxers and we're here to promote, tell their stories and promote it.
You can't ignore a story like Daniel Kinnan and boxing because there are very few global sports, truly global sports, like outside of football. But everywhere you go in the world where there's Asia- South America, Africa, all over the States, all over Eastern Europe, all over Western Europe, you will find boxing clubs. And this guy was the power broker within the sport.
To go back to something very interesting you said, Nicola, what boxing represented to Kinahan. So one, he had a very genuine passion for it regardless, right? I mean, he just liked the sport. And then somewhere along the line, it was potentially an off ramp to, as you said, respectability, to being legitimate, to power, influence, glamour, etc.
So one, that's really interesting if that's what boxing represented to him. And then secondly, I suppose the other side of the coin is it's why a lot of people, he came to the attention of a lot of people. Gary Lineker does not know about Daniel Kinnahan if he's not involved with Tyson Fury, the UK audience and beyond.
And maybe, I don't know, there's less of a kind of pressure to get him on authorities. I suppose what I'm asking is, was this intensity around Kinnahan
nailing down Kinahan if he hadn't been such a public figure in the boxing world would it have been as intense as partaking in boxing kind of quicken events or hazing events or was this coming regardless even if he never went near boxing and most people in the world didn't know his name?
I personally think that his attempts to legitimize himself in that way and to become such a public figure is what heightened everything. Now, there's a couple of strands to all of this, right? So if you just bear with me briefly, you know, you try and get into the head of Daniel Kinahan. Daniel Kinahan's father is such an important person and such a bizarre, unusual person.
guy inhabiting that world because he was a middle class man who came from a very loving, supportive family. Both his parents worked, he was educated. He chose that world and he went into it all the way back in the 1980s in Dublin and he went from zero to 100. He was a nobody and the next thing he was caught with £100,000 at the time.
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